Junior Brexit minister Steve Baker said the request was impossible as the Brexit impact studies did not exist as separate documents.
Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

The government will take up to three weeks to release dozens of papers detailing the economic impact of Brexit despite a Commons motion demanding their immediate publication, ministers said on Tuesday.

The announcement prompted Labour to accuse the government of using “semantics and double-speak” to ignore the will of MPs. It also brought criticism from some Conservatives with one, Anna Soubry, calling the move a “gross contempt” of parliament.

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But responding to an urgent question in the Commons from Labour, the junior Brexit minister, Steve Baker, said the request was impossible as the assessments did not exist as separate documents.

Labour has demanded for weeks the release of the papers, which detail the potential impact of Brexit across various parts of the economy, prompting speculation ministers are reluctant because of the gloomy assessments they contained.

A Labour opposition motion, passed unanimously last week, called for the papers to be released immediately to the Brexit select committee, which would in turn decide what sections could be published more widely.

But Baker said there had been “some misunderstanding” over what the papers amounted to.

“As the government has made clear, it is not the case that there are 58 sectoral impact assessments,” he said.

“Let me clarify exactly what the sectoral analysis is. It is a wide mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis contained in a range of documents, developed at different times since the referendum. It means looking at 58 sectors to inform our negotiating positions.

“The analysis examines the nature of activity in the sectors, how our trade is conducted with the EU currently, and in many cases considers the alternatives after we leave the EU as well as looking at other precedents.”

They were “constantly evolving and being updated”, he said. “But it is not, and nor has it ever been, a series of impact assessments examining the quantitative impact of Brexit on these sectors.”

Baker added: “Given this, it will take the government some time to collate and bring together this information in a way that is accessible and informative to the committee. We will provide this information to the committee as soon as is possible.” This would, he said, take no more than three weeks.

Matthew Pennycook, the shadow Brexit minister who tabled the urgent question, said that if the impact assessment papers did not exist as billed, “a clear impression has been allowed to develop over many months that they do”.

He pointed to a Labour Freedom of Information request for the papers in September, which was refused by the Brexit department, which nonetheless confirmed it held the information.

Pennycook said the government needed to act more quickly: “This farce has dragged on for far too long. Ministers cannot use semantics and double-speak to avoid the clear instruction that this house has given. There can be no further delay. Ministers just need to get on with it.”

Baker responded by accusing Labour of prioritising political advantage over the national interest.

He said: “What I will say is, I think the public will look at the Labour party today, look at what they’re asking for, they will look at the kind of narrative which members opposite are trying to create, and they will ask: whose side are they on?”

The government has also released a written statement from the Brexit secretary, David Davis, explaining the situation with the papers and saying it would take up to three weeks to release them.

Speaking in the Commons the chair of the Brexit select committee, Labour’s Hilary Benn, said he feared the delay would be used by ministers to edit and censor the documents.

Davis’s statement said the time was needed “to collate and bring together this information in a way that is accessible and informative for the committee”, Benn noted.

Benn said: “I would expect the committee ro receive these documents in the form they were when the motion was carried – in other words, unamended.”

Soubry said that the “nuts and bolts” of the debate last week about the papers had been ministers talking about redaction not that the documents did not exist.

She said: “Would the minister please take this matter seriously? This is a gross contempt of this place.”